Senator Dean Heller speaks during a debate at KNPB in Reno.

What message did Republicans in the U.S. Senate, including Nevada's Sen. Dean Heller, hope to send to the rest of the world when they rejected a U.N. treaty on the rights of the disabled, a treaty based on U.S. law and pushed by the U.S., last week?

Heller didn't put out a statement on the vote that blocked ratification of the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, an initiative of the George W. Bush administration, but apologists for the rejection of a treaty that would have made the 20-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act an international standard argued that it would threaten U.S. sovereignty.

In doing so, they rejected the recommendation of one of their own standard-bearers, the former senator, Senate GOP leader and presidential candidate Bob Dole, a World War II hero who appeared in the Senate on Tuesday in a wheelchair to urge support of the treaty.

Instead, they chose to listen to the paranoiac ranting of a senator who lost a re-election bid in his own state, as well as a bid for the presidential nomination, Rick Santorum, who wrote that the treaty threatened his own 4-year-old daughter, who has Trisomy 18. The treaty, he argued, would sanction allowing her to die.

Home-schoolers also opposed the treaty, claiming without any justification in the treaty that foreign countries could ban their practice in the U.S.

Still others said, according to The Hill newspaper, that it requires mandatory monitoring of children with disabilities and would "force America to sanction sterilization or abortion for the disabled - at taxpayer expense."

Not since opponents of the Affordable Care Act found "death panels" in the law has so much been made of so little.

The 38 Republican senators - including Heller - should be embarrassed.

■■■

There was some evidence that they were indeed embarrassed.

According to Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, "One by one, Senators of both parties approached (Dole), with former colleagues gently resting their hands on his shoulder or reaching out to his left hand ... Then, one by one, after Dole was wheeled off the floor, most Republicans voted against the measure. Many members did not register their 'nay' votes verbally, instead whispering their opposition directly to the clerk or gesturing their hands from their chairs."

One member of the GOP who did vote for the treaty was another former presidential candidate and war hero, Sen. John McCain. While Nevada's Sen. Heller remained quiet on the subject, this is what the Arizona Republican said: "Protecting the rights of persons with disabilities, any person, is not a political issue. It is a human issue, regardless of where in the world a disabled person strives to live a normal, independent life where basic rights and accessibilities are available. Disability rights and protections have always been a bipartisan issue, and ratifying this treaty should be no different."

Instead, Heller and fellow Republicans made it a political issue, telling the world that the U.S., with the world's biggest economy and mightiest military, is afraid that some foreign potentate will force it to ban home-schooling or force it to euthanize babies. Really.

Those senators who turned their backs on a former colleague seriously injured fighting for his country were right to be embarrassed. If they weren't, they should be.